Arizona Medical-Marijuana List of 48 State-Authorized Dispensaries Released by DHS

Dozens of medical-pot dispensaries dot the state from nearly every corner since the first one, Arizona Organix of Glendale, opened in November.

A recent newsletter to patients released by the state Department of Health and obtained by New Times shows the addresses of 48 of these pioneering businesses, which teeter on the edge of a popular state law and a whimsically applied federal prohibition against cannabis.

The list below is current as of the DHS' July 31 newsletter. However, a more recent tally of dispensary companies shows that 55 have now obtained state approval to operate. An additional 38 are scheduled for inspections that precede approval.

As we reported last week, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge has nixed a state deadline the latecomers had to meet in order to gain approval and renew their business licenses for next year. That means it's likely that nearly all of the 98 businesses picked for selected geographical locations in a lottery held last August will be open for business in the coming months.

More than 90 percent of Arizona's roughly 39,000 medical-marijuana patients now live within 25 miles of one of the retail stores, the state reports. Home growers and untold numbers of amateur caregivers won't like that statistic, since it means that most will be forced to pull up their last legal harvest once their registration card is renewed.

Jamie Peachey

On the other hand, the numerous dispensaries sprouting up statewide will make it convenient for just about all patients to buy their medicine in an authorized store. Whether this leads to an increase in the number of Arizona patients remains to be seen. Perhaps because of the legal questions surrounding medical marijuana in Arizona, including confusion over the state-approved dispensaries versus the unauthorized cannabis clubs targeted by County Attorney Bill Montgomery and other prohibitionists, the number of patients hasn't changed much since January.

Arizona still has a long way to go to catch up to its pot-friendly neighbor, Colorado, which has nearly three times the number of medical-marijuana patients, (about 107,000 as of June 30) yet more than a million fewer total residents. As you probably heard, voters in Colorado and Washington legalized weed for all adults -- 21 and older -- in historic elections last year.

The new legalization law will undoubtedly have some effect on Colorado's medical-pot industry in the coming years. But Colorado's recent experiences on the medical front seem to indicate that Arizona's dispensaries -- kept to a maximum number by state statute -- will beat the normal odds of success for small businesses.

As a Denver Post article from March explains, the number of Colorado dispensaries has declined from 1,131 at the end of 2010 to 675 as of the article's publication, a decline of more than 40 percent. However, doing a few further calculations shows that the decline boosted the number of patients per dispensary from 95 to 159.

With 95 dispensaries and about 38,000 patients, that's a per-patient ratio of 408 for each Arizona dispensary.

Overlooking the fledgling industry's other risks, those are pretty good odds.

Scroll down for the state's list of 48 currently open dispensaries in Arizona:

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@DonkeyHotay You reply to all posts with generic replies. I suppose you would like to have all drug users and traffickers shot in the back of the head. Singapore, a country considered to be Westernized and First World hang drug traffickers, and the amounts are small that will get you an appointment with the hangman. Google it if you don't believe it. Also Vietnam, Thailand, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and numerous other Asian countries just execute drug traffickers and users who have a bit too many drugs. So @DonkeyHotay hows that for you? Just kill em all.

"The classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug as well as the continuing controversy as to whether or not cannabis is of medical value [59] are obstacles to medical progress in this area. Based on evidence currently available the Schedule I classification is not tenable; it is not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking."

FOLKS THIS COUNTRY IS GOIN' TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET. MY FOREFATHERS WOULD TURN AROUND THEIR DAM GRAVE IF THEY SAW THIS COUNTRY LEAD BY THE ANTI CHRIST NOW SELLING MARIJUANA TO OUR YOUNG FOLKS. SHAME ON BOHAMMA AND SHAME ON THE LIBERALS!!!

"More than 90 percent of Arizona's roughly 39,000 medical-marijuana patients now live within 25 miles of one of the retail stores, the state reports. Home growers and untold numbers of amateur caregivers won't like that statistic, since it means that most will be forced to pull up their last legal harvest once their registration card is renewed."

EXACTLY what the Greedy Big $$ Dispensary Cartel paid and bargained for !!

Imagine if it were illegal to cook your own hamburgers if you lived within a 1,963 square mile exclusion zone surrounding every McDonalds.

Uruguay Votes To Legalize MarijuanaLegislators in Uruguay voted Wednesday to legalize the growth and consumption of marijuana, paving the way for that country to become the first to transform its drug policy.August 01, 2013Alisa Barba

@HILLFOLKREDNECK Its common knowledge that George Washington and others raised hemp. I don't know about the claim that they smoked it, but they certainly raised it for the fiber content. Up until the time that the marijuana tax act was passed, all parts of the plant were known as hemp, regardless of what it was being used for. Sorry, but the founders did not believe it was governments job to regulate what people put into their bodies. Alcohol was outlawed at the federal level by a constitutional amendment, because lawmakers did not see that the constitution gave them the authority to ban it (ever hear of prohibition?), yet marijuana has been banned with out any such legal or constitutional authority.

I agree with you, Obama is either the anti christ or he's paving the way for the anti christ. But badfast23 is right, the founding fathers DID smoke hemp, they used hemp to found america, hemp helped win the second world war, and the declaration of independence was written on hemp paper. All the sails, maps, bibles and flags were made from hemp.

Even the priests of the old testament and Moses himself used the oil from the kaneh-bosm plant as medicine and a holy anointing oil according to the hebrew, and this was 1450 BC.

The word for cannabis is kaneh-bosm, also rendered in traditional Hebrew as kaneh or kannabus. This word appears five times in the Old Testament; in the books of Exodus, the Song of Songs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.

The word kaneh-bosm has been mistranslated as calamus, a common marsh plant with little monetary value that does not have the qualities or value ascribed to kaneh-bosm.

The error occurred in the oldest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint in the third century BC, and was repeated in the many translations that followed.

The point is cannabis has been used throughout history. God made it for us to use as medicine just like thousands of other plants he made as medicine, making nature illegal is blasphemous. I'm very religious, and no force on earth will ever change that, not Satan, not the anti christ, nothing. But I also use cannabis as medicine like God intended.

@HILLFOLKREDNECK The marijuana tax act was passed in 1937 after being presented as a racist act to prevent Blacks and Hispanics from using marijuana. In reality, those who passed this tax act held vast quantities of forest that they wanted to use to make paper (hemp makes a better paper) and one did not want to have to compete with hemp rope (after the invention of nylon). They managed to convince the American public that marijuana caused violent behavior and that it would cause blacks to do forbidden things like to walk on the shadow of a white man. Five years later, however, our supplies of hemp (marijuana) were not available from the Philippines as the Philippines were occupied by the Japanese. The government then turned and encouraged farmers to grow hemp (marijuana) for the war effort. A film called Hemp for Victory was produced by the American government and is available for viewing on the internet. Children were even encouraged to grow it (4H Clubs) for farmers in an agricultural extension service bulletin from Kentucky written at the time. I guess nobody bothered to tell the government that they were dealing with the "killer weed."

@HILLFOLKREDNECK In 1620 the first marijuana laws required farmers in Virginia to grow hemp (marijuana). Both Washington and Jefferson wrote in their diaries about growing hemp on Mount Vernon and at Monticello. One historian wrote that if Washington's troops had not been wearing hemp in that horrible winter that they weathered near the Delaware that they probably would have perished. Washington even grew a form of Indian Hemp which was known for its medicinal qualities rather than for fiber. Our first drafts of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper. Betsy Ross said that our first flag was made from the sails of a ship. If this is the case it was most certainly made of marijuana. Between 1850 and 1900 about half of the prescriptions written by doctors contained cannabis. Cannabis is marijuana. You may be a real good redneck but you are not much of a historian...

@HILLFOLKREDNECK your founding fathers were potheads, they smoked regularly, stitched the first american flag from thread made from the plant fiber, and it was at one point ILLEGAL to NOT have a percentage of your farm dedicated to growing hemp.

Haters/Non Haters....ever one has gone off topic. All I have read has very little to do with medical patients. Back to reality, should medical patients be allow to (if there is benefit) be allow to have the option to use medical marijuana??? All these posts I am residing should be have a title---Fuck patients or not fuck patients......... who is who here? The persons should start their posts by stating fuck the patients or not fuck the patients, and continue their reasons as to why????????

@DonkeyHotay I AGREE , that's how the "CORPORATE STATE" works. I don't care for this ' Piecemeal-Backdoor-Trojan Horse Approach'. But the current leaders of the movement have chosen this path. Long ball.3 yards and a cloud of dust.The goal is the ENDZONE. Maybe the MJ movement needs a real BALLBUSTER, you know, like JIMMY HOFFA ?

@dkessler4" Both Washington and Jefferson wrote in their diaries about growing hemp"

And BOTH were FINANCIAL FAILURES, as Euopoean hemp was cheaper and of higher quality. Jefferson died broke and bankrupt on his farm.

@dkessler4"Betsy Ross said that our first flag was made from the sails of a ship. If this is the case it was most certainly made of marijuana. "

Complete stoner BULLSHIT! ... Betsy Ross did NOT sew the first American flag, that was a complete FABRICATION and lie made up by her great-grandchildren nearly 100 years after her death to promote and pimp her legacy.

The First American flag was made of the same materials as EVERY OTHER FLAG of the day -- WOOL Bunting.

@badfast23@HILLFOLKREDNECK THE HELL THEY WERENT!! DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YALL ARE TALKIN' ABOUT BOY MY FOREFATHERS SETTLED THIS DAM COUNTRY NOT WALKED ACROSS THE BORDER WITH POT ON THEIR WETBACKS!!! SOUNDS TO ME YOU'VE BEEN SMOKIN' TO MUCH AND MAYBE NEED TO TAKE A TRIP TO THE GOOD SHERIFF'S TENT CITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@DonkeyHotay@dkessler4 Whether or not Jefferson and Washington were successful farmers was not the issue. I am grateful that they were successful revolutionaries. I did not pretend to have solved the mystery of our first flag. I did state that "IF" the Betsy Ross story is correct the sails of that day were most certainly made of hemp (marijuana). Sails were not made of wool. Hemp was an important fiber in early America and if (IF) you are a scholar of history you are aware that we even went to war in 1812 over hemp as one of the materials that was carried by the merchant fleet. Many early flags were made of wool bunting as you mention but even then often the stars were made of linen which can be made from many fibrous plants, including hemp. One of the earliest flags known to exist (American National Flag, 19 stars (1816-1817) Updated to 25 stars (1836-1837) was made of linen. Even our covered wagons were made of hemp. All rules aside, I stand by my statement that hemp (marijuana) is at least as American as mom and apple pie...